Sunday, June 29, 2008

My attorney Dean Cook filed a brief requesting a motion for summary judgment regarding the new law adding "under God" to the Texas state pledge. I uploaded it to my State Pledge webpage along with a brief from the state attorney general in opposition and our follow-up response.

I had a chance to read the briefs recently and I found them to be interesting as they contain the legal arguments pro and con. If you read the included excerpts from the legislative debate transcripts, you will note that some of our elected officials saw this law as unconstitutional from the beginning. State representatives of different faiths, a Quaker, a Jew, and a Baptist, took deliberate steps to ensure that the non-secular purpose of the bill was recorded in the legislative history. It is clear from their lines of questioning of the sponsor of the bill that they were cleverly laying the groundwork during the debates for a future separation of church and state lawsuit even though it was a certainty that the bill would garner enough votes to become law.

Speaking of clever heroes, I was pleased with what Mr. Cook wrote on our behalf in his briefs and I think he is persuasive. The next step in the case is that the judge may hear oral arguments or he might just make a judgment based on the written briefs.